Best movies like Stars and Stripes Forever

Strike up the band! Here comes The Greatest Musical Show on Earth!

A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Stars and Stripes Forever Starring Clifton Webb, Debra Paget, Robert Wagner, Ruth Hussey, and more. If you liked Stars and Stripes Forever then you may also like: Yellow Jack, We've Never Been Licked, Night and Day, Oh! What a Lovely War, Rose of Washington Square and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.

Marine bandmaster John Philip Sousa (Clifton Webb) becomes famous for his marches and inspires the sousaphone.

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Yellow Jack

A fairly accurate historical account of Walter Reed's search for the cause of "Yellow Jack" or Yellow Fever and those who risked their lives in the pursuit.

We've Never Been Licked

Young Brad Craig enters the military school with a chip on his shoulder which upperclassmen quickly knock off. Once adjusted, Craig falls in love with a professor's beautiful daughter, only to find she is in love with his roommate.

Night and Day

Swellegant and elegant. Delux and delovely. Cole Porter was the most sophisticated name in 20th-century songwriting. And to play him on screen, Hollywood chose debonair icon Cary Grant. Grant stars for the first time in color in this fanciful biopic. Alexis Smith plays Linda, whose serendipitous meetings with Porter lead to a meeting at the alter. More than 20 of his songs grace this tail of triumph and tragedy, with Grant lending is amiable voice to "You're the Top", "Night and Day" and more. Monty Woolley, a Yale contemporary of Porter, portrays himself. And Jane Wyman, Mary Martin, Eve Arden and others provide vocals and verve. Lights down. Curtain up. Showtune standards embraced by generations are yours to enjoy in "Night and Day."

Oh! What a Lovely War

Satire about the First World War based on a stage musical of the same name, portraying the "Game of War" and focusing mainly on the members of one family (last name Smith) who go off to war. Much of the action in the movie revolves around the words of the marching songs of the soldiers, and many scenes portray some of the more famous (and infamous) incidents of the war, including the assassination of Duke Ferdinand, the Christmas meeting between British and German soldiers in no-mans-land, and the wiping out by their own side of a force of Irish soldiers newly arrived at the front, after successfully capturing a ridge that had been contested for some time.

Rose of Washington Square

Rose Sargent, a Roaring '20s singer, becomes a Ziegfeld Follies star as her criminal husband gets deeper in trouble.

Jammin' the Blues

In this short film, prominent jazz musicians of the 1940s gather for a rare filming of a jam session. This highly stylized chronicle features tenor sax legend Lester Young.

Alexander's Ragtime Band

Classical violinist, Roger Grant disappoints his family and teacher when he organizes a jazz band, but he and the band become successful. Roger falls in love with the band's singer, Stella, but his reluctance to lose her leads him to thwart her efforts to become a solo star. When the World War separates them in 1917, Stella marries Roger's best friend and, when Roger returns home after the war, an important concert at Carnegie Hall brings the corners of the romantic triangle together.

Carmencita

The first woman to appear in front of an Edison motion picture camera and possibly the first woman to appear in a motion picture within the United States. In the film, Carmencita is recorded going through a routine she had been performing at Koster & Bial's in New York since February 1890.

The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker

In early 1900s' Pennsylvania, Mr. Pennypacker has two company offices and two families with a combined total of 17 children. With an office in Harrisburg and an office in Philadelphia, he has successfully kept two separate homes. However, when an emergency requires his oldest son to find him, Mr. Pennypacker's dual life is revealed.

The Music Man

A con man comes to an Iowa town with a scam using a boy's marching band program, but things don't go according to plan.

Rustin

Gay civil rights activist Bayard Rustin helps Martin Luther King Jr. and others organize the 1963 March on Washington.

Lure of the Wilderness

A young girl and her father, who is unjustly accused of murder, seek refuge in a Georgia swamp until they are befriended by a trapper who penetrates the swamp in search of his dog.

Mahler

Famed composer Gustav Mahler reflects on the tragedies of his life and failing marriage while traveling by train.

Pennies from Heaven

Larry Poole, in prison on a false charge, promises an inmate that when he gets out he will look up and help out a family. The family turns out to be a young girl, Patsy Smith, and her elderly grandfather who need lots of help. This delays Larry from following his dream and going to Venice and becoming a gondolier. Instead, he becomes a street singer and, while singing in the street, meets a pretty welfare worker, Susan Sprague. She takes a dim view of Patsy's welfare under the guardianship of Larry and her grandfather and starts proceedings to have Patsy placed in an orphanage.

Retro Puppet Master

A direct-to-video prequel in which, Toulon runs a puppet theatre in the heart of Paris and meets the sorcerer (the mysterious Afzel). When his life is saved by the lovely Swiss Ambassador's daughter Ilsa, we bear witness to the origin of the Puppet Master.

Song o' My Heart

Broken hearts in Ireland. Sean is a great tenor, in semi-retirement, living in a village close to Mary, the woman he’s always loved. Mary’s aunt convinced her to marry a man for his money; he has recently deserted her, leaving her penniless. She and her two children, Eileen and Tad, move in with the selfish and austere aunt. Eileen is falling in love with Fergus, a young man who’s off to Dublin to seek his fortune. Sean is drawn out of retirement and goes on tour in America. At his first concert, he’s nervous and out of sorts until the last song, when peace descends on him like a gift. What has happened, and can family life be set right?

Great Day

An impending V.I.P. visit causes bustle in an English village, while the Ellis family struggles with private problems.

The Iron Major

William 'Frank' Cavanaugh is a top football coach who gave up his career to enter WWI where he became a hero. After the war he went back to coaching where he ended up having one of the best winning percentages in football history.

Random Harvest

An amnesiac World War I vet falls in love with a music hall star, only to suffer an accident which restores his original memories but erases his post-War life.

Trottie True

Tottie True is a gay-90s British music-hall performer who has her sights set on moving from rags to riches, who loses her heart to the pure-and-true blue balloonist, Sid Skinner, but continues her upward search on improving her social status. She finally settles for Lord Landon Digby who has lots of assets and a very-stiff upper lip. She gets a lot of the latter and very little of the former, and decides Sid might have been a better choice.

The Great Victor Herbert

In his last film assignment, portly Walter Connolly fills the title role (in more ways than one) in The Great Victor Herbert. Very little of Herbert's life story is incorporated in the screenplay (a closing title actually apologizes for the film's paucity of cold hard facts); instead, the writers allow the famed composer's works to speak for themselves. In the tradition of one of his own operettas, Herbert spends most of his time patching up the shaky marriage between tenor John Ramsey (Allan Jones) and Louise Hall (Mary Martin). Many of Herbert's most famous compositions are well in evidence, including "Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life", "March of the Toys" and "Kiss Me Again", the latter performed con brio by teenaged coloratura Susanna Foster. Evidently, the producers were able to secure the film rights for the Herbert songs, but not for the stage productions in which they appeared, which may explain such bizarre interpolations as having a song from Naughty Marietta.

Satchmo the Great

In this 1957 biography film of the jazz-great Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong, he and his band tour the world as American good-will ambassadors bring jazz at its best to the people of the world. Within the film, the life of Louis Armstrong is portrayed through the music. One of the outstanding scenes in this "biography/docudrama" shows blind songwriter W. C. Handy, with tears streaming down his face, as Armstrong, backed by Leonard Bernstein leading the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, play Handy's immortal "St. Louis Blues."

Leader of the Band

Eddie is a down-on-his-luck bar pianist who has just been fired from another job. Desperate for work, he finds a school looking for a leader for its hopelessly incompetent marching band. Somehow, Eddie has to whip these kids into shape in time for the big band competition. Can he get them to march without tripping over their own feet, let alone win the contest?

Young People

Wendy Ballantine's parents decide to retire from show biz so she can have a normal life. They are unwelcome in the small town until a storm lets the family show their stuff.

Sailing Along

Sailing Along is a 1938 British musical comedy film directed by Sonnie Hale and starring Jessie Matthews, Barry MacKay, Jack Whiting, Frank Pettingell, Noel Madison and Alastair Sim. A barge-owner's adopted daughter falls in love with his son, and gives up her chances of stardom to be with him

The Great American Broadcast

After WWI two men go into radio. Failure leads the wife of one to borrow money from another; she goes on, after separation, to stardom. A coast-to-coast radio program is set up to bring everyone back together.

Do You Love Me

Katharine Hilliard, mousy dean of a stuffy music school, meets and is insulted by swing band leader Barry Clayton on a train. To "show" him she takes a friend's advice, removes her glasses, and puts on a designer gown. Naturally, she becomes gorgeous. Soon, both Barry and crooner Jimmy Hale are after her, and she finds herself in the midst of triangles and misunderstandings.

The Rough Riders

The story of the military unit organized by future U.S. President Teddy Roosevelt and its adventures in Cuba during the Spanish-American War of 1898.

The Dolly Sisters

Two sisters from Hungary become famous entertainers in the early 1900s. Fictionalized biography with lots of songs.

Mark Twain and Me

During the final years of his life, the famous writer Samuel "Mark Twain" Clemens is befriended by a young girl named Dorothy Quick.

Midnight Lovers

During World War I, a young woman marries a famous flying ace. After the honeymoon, he is called back into service and leaves for the battlefield. Not long afterwards she discovers evidence that her new husband has been cheating on her.

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